


Innoculation

by GemmaRose



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/F, Minor Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Relationship Discussions, Swordfighting, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 08:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20636243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: Arcee isn't very good with sparklings, but for her conjunx she'll agree to try.





	Innoculation

**Author's Note:**

> Coralbreak belongs to [Alyonian](http://alyonian.tumblr.com) and is used with her permission. Also in this universe Unicron got in a fistfight with Cybertron 2.0 and the Lost Light crew killed it with matrixes. Cybertron 1.0 is still whole and mostly healthy, and is where this story takes place.

“I want a sparkling.” Aileron said as she joined Arcee on the couch with a cube of energon, and some of Arcee’s sip was sucked through her vents instead of down her intake, leaving her coughing for a klik.

“You what?” she managed once the fluid was cleared, and Aileron shifted closer to her, thigh plating pressing up against Arcee’s.

“I want a sparkling.” Aileron repeated herself, her field calm and serious where the edge meshed easily with Arcee's.

“Now?” Arcee asked dumbly, wondering what had gotten into her conjunx. Aileron was almost always offworld, and she was terrible at handling mechs with less than a millennia of life experience. If they had a sparkling, sigma-forged or not, who would raise it?

“Primus, no. Not immediately.” Aileron smiled, soft and vulnerable, and Arcee reached over to twine her hand with her conjunx's. “But I want to raise one, someday, when we're ready.”

“You'll be waiting a long time.” Arcee warned her. “I'm no good with sparklings.”

“I don't know, you handled that little one at the park the other deca-cycle quite well.” Aileron tucked her legs up on the couch, slotting herself against Arcee as close as she could without being in her lap.

“The one that tried to steal my swords?” Arcee raised a skeptical optic ridge. Aileron nodded. “I was two kliks from transforming to throw her off.”

“But you found someone to disengage her before it came to that.” Aileron took a sip of her fuel, and Arcee set hers down on the low table in front of the couch. “You would be a wonderful carer, I know it. Or a creator.” Her optics sparkled, field turning flirtatious, and Arcee rolled her optics but didn't bother trying to suppress her grin.

“If we spark-forge, I'm not carrying.” Arcee said flatly. Aileron lit up, field buzzing with joy, and Arcee shouldered her conjunx as a grin spread across her face. “If! I'm not half as good with sparklings as you seem to think I am.”

“You are, you just need to spend more time around them.” Aileron leaned forward and picked up Arcee's fuel to hand over to her. “We should finish and get to work.”

Arcee accepted her fuel and took a sip. On this they would have to agree to disagree.

\---

“I've an idea.”

Arcee looked up from her news datapad and tilted her helm slightly, field flickering out to brush against Aileron's with a pulse of curiosity.

“You need to spend more time around bitties to get used to them, right?” Aileron asked rhetorically, leaning over the back of the couch next to Arcee’s shoulder. “But at the park there are too many and you get overwhelmed.”

Arcee nodded slowly as her conjunx straightened up, hand trailing over her kibble as Aileron moved. Last time they went to the park the little sword-thief had made another attempt, and Arcee had frozen like a dieseldeer in headlights. Tenacious though the sparkling may be, it was still a squishy blobby thing without any armour, far too easy to hurt. There was a reason neither side had produced many sparklings during the war, after all, and it wasn't just the fuel rationing. “If you're about to suggest bittysitting for Starscream again, just know my answer is still No.”

“Well, not bittysitting.” Aileron settled across her lap, and Arcee set her datapad down on the back of the couch. “I was thinking something with a little more structure.”

“A controlled environment.” Arcee said, doing her best not to let the excitement in her conjunx's field affect her own level helm. “Have you ever met a sparkling? They're miniature agents of chaos, no environment can control then.”

“A school could.”

Arcee's processor screeched to a halt, background threads disintegrating as she tried to comprehend her conjunx's words. “I'm nowhere near qualified to work in a school.” she reminded Aileron. “I'm a warrior, not a teacher.”

“There's a school I heard about the other mega-cycle that'll be teaching various combat styles to anyone willing to pay.” Aileron countered, sliding her arms over Arcee's shoulders. “They’re willing to take just about anyone as an instructor who’s willing to put in the time. You could sign up to teach swordfighting to bitties.”

Arcee considered it for a klik. If nothing else it would likely be interesting, but she hadn't the first clue how to teach someone else the things beaten into her frame alongside her late twin, so many millions of meta-cycles ago. “I'll consider it.” she conceded, wrapping her arms around her conjunx's waist and tracing familiar seams with the tips of her fingers. Aileron shivered, warmth rippling through her field, and Arcee mirrored that warmth with a strong pulse of _confidence devotion love_ as she drew her conjunx in for a kiss. They didn't talk about sparklings or swordfighting, or much at all, for the rest of the night.

\---

“This room here.” Aileron said, stopping in front of the door to the room her conjunx would be using as a classroom. “Line up along the wall, and I’ll go tell your teacher you’re all here.”

The bitlets hurried to do so, the little femme from the park all but vibrating, and Aileron had to bite back a laugh as she slipped into the room. “They’re all here.” she told Arcee, who was stood in the middle of the room near a rack of two dozen training ‘weapons’.

“This was a bad idea.”

Aaand here they were again. Aileron stifled a sigh and instead walked over to wrap her conjunx in a hug. “It wasn’t.” she insisted, pushing as much confidence and trust into her field as she could manage. “You’re going to mess up, but all first-time teachers do. Their caretakers already signed waivers, and they want to learn.” she pulled back, and a few gentle tugs on Arcee’s arm got her conjunx to turn and face her. “I know at least one of them is here because she wants to learn from _you_.”

Arcee smiled, a brief little flash of a thing, and Aileron tugged her down for a quick, chaste kiss. “Now go greet your students.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Arcee dropped another kiss on the top of her helm, subglyphs light and affectionate as she plucked the datapad from Aileron’s hand and strode towards the door, shoulders squared and back straight. With any luck this class would help Arcee realize how vastly she underestimated her own ability to interact with younglings, and if it didn’t... well, at least a few bitlets were learning swordfighting from one of the most experienced Cybertronians alive.

Arcee returned from the door in short order, all twenty bitlets trailing behind her, and Aileron bit back a smile. The tallest of them only came up to Arcee’s mid-thigh, and that was the shuttle femmeling, the rest came up to Arcee’s knees more or less. Unsurprisingly, the little pink and white submarine from the park was first in line, all but stepping on Arcee’s heels and staring up at her with big bright optics. It was adorable, and Aileron found herself wondering if Arcee would agree to a spark-forged sparkling. They grew up so much slower than sigma-forged ones, but the thought of a tiny little bitty in their colours made Aileron’s spark spin faster in its casing.

“Everyone, on this line.” Arcee pointed at a stripe on the floor, and the bitlets shoved their way into a line more or less shoulder to shoulder. “When I call your name, raise your dominant hand.”

“What’s a dom-ee-nate hand?” one of the bitlets asked, and Aileron stifled a giggle at the look of utter consternation that crossed Arcee’s face at the clumsy pronunciation.

“Whichever one you use to hold a light pen.” she said stiffly, and the young femme lowered her hand with a little nod.

“Okay.”

Arcee looked at the datapad in her hand, and her lips quirked up just the slightest bit at the first name on the list. “Coralbreak of Tethrius.” she read, and the little would-be sword thief raised both her hands with an excited ping. “Go put your swords by the door.”

The little submarine pouted, but a stern frown from Arcee had her turning and stomping over to the wall to remove her sheathed weapons. Aileron made a note to suggest later that Arcee make space for them on the rack with the training ‘weapons’.

“Tigersnarl of-” Arcee paused, optics narrowing the way they did when she was struggling to parse something. Aileron couldn’t blame her, Tigersnarl’s primary caretaker was a medic and it showed in his handwriting.

“Kisensui.” Tigersnarl said, raising one orange-striped hand.

“Right.” Arcee tapped the pad and turned to grab one of the foam covered sticks from the rack. “Have this.” she said, and Tigersnarl’s optics widened almost comically as she took the grip in her little hands.

The next three were seekerlets, the latest trine Starscream was sponsoring if she remembered rightly, and Aileron smiled at the way Arcee’s mouth twitched when the three of them started smacking each other with their newly acquired ‘swords’. Even on the edge of the room, well out of casual field range, it was easy to read the amusement on her conjunx’s face warring with the frustration in her frame. Absolutely adorable, if she did say so herself, but then again she was horribly biased.

The rest of the handing out of foam covered sticks went without issue, up until the end when Arcee picked up two sticks and gave them both to Coralbreak. Immediately the rest of the class began to complain, with the other little submarine, Divestuff, blowing a loud raspberry while she signed too quickly for Aileron to completely follow. The rude gesture though was one that Caminus and Cybertron shared, and Aileron had to muffle a snort. Any other instructor and the femmeling would be getting a word to her sisters after class. As it was, she was a little surprised Arcee didn't return the gesture.

“Quiet.” she snapped instead, turning sharply to lash her field out over her students. Aileron caught the edge of it, sternness and authority a solid enough veneer to fool the younglings, but not half enough to disguise her frustration from Aileron. The bitlets fell silent, optics wide, and Arcee ex-vented heavily. “Coralbreak has already been training with two swords. Prove to me that you can handle it, and I'll let any one of you start using a second stick.”

The bitlets burst into hushed chatter at that, and from the way they fell suddenly silent Arcee had lashed them with her field again. “I will not tolerate foolishness in my classes.” she said, drawing herself up tall again and folding her arms behind her back as she paced down the line of students. Aileron was reminded of military trainers in holos addressing their new recruits, and wondered briefly if that was what Arcee was trying to emulate. “From the moment you pick up your sticks at the start of the lesson, to the moment I tell you to return them at the end, you will listen to me. You will follow my instructions without question. You will not distract your fellow students with chatter, or strike them outside of sparring.”

“Whatifwe_do_doallthat?” the smallest of the students, a two-wheeler named Leal of Luath, asked as she jabbed her hand in the air, her glyphs coming so close together it took Aileron a moment to separate them enough to understand.

Arcee scowled, training her optics on the pastel little bike. “Then you'll all do a round of physical conditioning before we continue with class. Any further questions?” she scanned the row of students, optic shutters narrowed, and nodded once when no others raised their hands. “Good. We'll start with the overhelm strike.”

Aileron leaned back against the wall, crossed her arms, and settled in to watch her conjunx do what she did best.

\---

“How did today's class go?” Aileron asked when the door of their berthroom opened to admit her conjunx, not looking up from her packing. Arcee fell facedown on the berth with a dull clang and inarticulate groan, and Aileron chuckled at the non-reply. “That rowdy?”

“Over half of them dropped.”

Aileron grimaced, turning from her bag to her conjunx. “Do you want a hug?”

Arcee buried her helm further in her forearms, but the hopeful pulse of her field was more than answer enough. Aileron crawled onto the berth next to her conjunx and snuggled up next to her, letting one arm lay heavy across Arcee's back. “Who do you have left?” she asked, and Arcee turned her helm so their optics met. She looked tired, frustrated. Aileron resolved to pamper her later tonight.

“Coralbreak, obviously.” Arcee’s lips twitched briefly into a smile. “Aside from her, Tigersnarl, Divestuff, Mehetabel, Leal, and Starscream's brats showed up today.”

“Mehetabel was the... shuttle?” Aileron guessed. Arcee nodded, and Aileron took a moment to collect her thoughts before she spoke again. “Well, it seems to me that the rest of those bitties weren’t ready to commit to your class.”

“Aileron-” Arcee frowned, but Aileron put a hand to her mouth to shush her before she could start properly arguing.

“You teach very strictly, and that’s not wrong. On Caminus, swordfighting is never taught to spark-forged bitlets before they’re five vorns old because it requires such strict discipline.” she removed her hand from Arcee’s mouth, trailing it down her conjunx’s side. “The ones who can handle it will stay. The rest, they can try again in a vorn or two.”

“You say that like I’ll still be teaching by then.” Arcee frowned, and Aileron leaned in to press a brief, chaste kiss to her lips.

“Are you really going to give up over this?” she asked rhetorically, arm slipping lower to tighten around Arcee’s waist. Arcee shook her helm, and Aileron smiled. “That’s my Arcee.”


End file.
